Jobs flap seeps across Senate map

Blowback from White House attempts to dangle administration jobs in front of insurgent Democratic challengers is now threatening to burn candidates in some of the most competitive Senate contests in the nation, expanding the scope of damage well beyond the two states where the furor originated.

Unresolved questions surrounding Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in Colorado — and Republican attempts to provide accelerant to the incumbent protection flap — have suddenly forced Senate candidates in a handful of other states, including Arkansas, Illinois and Ohio, to respond to queries about possible White House involvement in their own races, throwing them off message and on the defensive.

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In Arkansas, just days before the June 8 Senate runoff, Republicans leaped at the chance to score points in a contest where another pesky Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the White House-backed incumbent.

After POLITICO reported Thursday that a spokeswoman for Halter responded to a question about whether the White House made overtures with a terse “no” and declined to elaborate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly responded with a press release questioning whether the administration had written off Lincoln months ago.

That was one of more than a half-dozen press releases and clips forwarded by both the NRSC and the Republican National Committee Thursday in an effort to keep the focus on White House incumbent protection efforts.

In Ohio, GOP Senate nominee Rob Portman’s campaign also sought to leverage the Sestak-Romanoff episode by firing off a query about whether Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who lost to Democratic establishment favorite Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher in a May 4 primary.

“In the wake of recent White House job offers, one must ask, was Jennifer Brunner offered a job to make way for Obama rubber stamp and Washington establishment choice Lee Fisher?” asked Portman spokeswoman Jessica Towhey.

A spokesman for Brunner, who has not yet publicly endorsed Fisher, did not return calls seeking comment.

Republicans, who believe the issue could prove toxic in an environment in which voters already deeply distrust government and exasperated with insider-driven politics, have pursued a strategy to knock Democratic Senate candidates off balance and advance a larger narrative that the Obama administration has failed to live up to the high ethical standards and transparency it promised voters two years ago.

"It reinforces the perception that Washington is irreparably broken, corrupt and that Obama's promised era of a clean, transparent new way of governing was as cynical as any promise made in modern political history," GOP strategist Rick Wilson said. "This plays precisely into the intense and growing anti-government anger and this kind of petty little political game of which voters are sick to death.”